A difficult climate

Michelle Grattan and Katharine Murphy

IT WAS black Friday, when everybody was a loser. Kevin Rudd's chances of taking his big emissions trading initiative to Copenhagen next month were fading as a fractured Senate refused to come to a vote. Malcolm Turnbull's leadership, staked on his support for the Government scheme, appeared doomed. The Liberal Party was cannibalising itself.

This has been an extraordinary week of hijacks and hostage-taking, political terrorism and heroic stands.

It started with what seemed a too-good-to-be-true deal between the Government and the Opposition to deliver, in bipartisan fashion, the emissions trading plan.

By the week's end, more than a dozen Liberals had quit key positions so they could defy their leader on the legislation, in a breathtaking putsch driven largely by Senate climate sceptics led by Liberal Senate leader Nick Minchin.

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The Liberal collapse is so spectacular it is easy to overlook how much the Opposition's catastrophe may cost the Government. Rudd, who as "friend of the chair" is at the centre of the Copenhagen conference, has had in his grasp a huge reform, as important as the dismantling of protection, bigger than the GST. But his grip is rapidly slipping.

When the Liberals refused to gag debate and pass the legislation yesterday, they were leaving it hanging until they settle their leadership early next week. The fate of the legislation is part of the weekend leadership haggling.

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There are three scenarios out of the coming party meeting: Turnbull hangs on; Hockey becomes leader; or Abbott does.

If Turnbull survives, the least likely scenario, he would insist on the deal going ahead. Abbott as leader would have the Liberals vote to defer the legislation.

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Hockey shares Turnbull's support for the legislation, but to become leader he would have to compromise. Signs of that emerged yesterday when Hockey (keeping a low-profile all day) took the rather odd step of tweeting: "Hey team re the ETS. Give me your views please on the policy and political debate. I really want your feedback."

If the Senate defers the legislation, that means, in practical terms, it is likely to be dead for this parliamentary term. The Opposition will not be inclined to risk another internal fracas.

If it is deferred next week and sent to a Senate inquiry, experts are divided about whether this would amount to "failure to pass" for the purpose of a double-dissolution trigger. But Rudd has said he does not want a premature poll and his office yesterday hosed down speculation of one.

Climate Minister Penny Wong, who has been working on emissions trading for two years, is on the brink of being left empty-handed, but at least she still has her job. It is hard to see how Turnbull won't be out of his very soon.

Ten Liberals, including frontbenchers Tony Abbott, Tony Smith and Sophie Mirabella, yesterday called for a party meeting on Tuesday "to move a motion that the position of leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party be declared vacant".

Some Liberals are trying to put together a deal in which a reluctant Hockey becomes leader, with Queenslander Peter Dutton (most recently in the headlines as the man desperately but unsuccessfully in search of a safe seat) becoming deputy, replacing Julie Bishop.

Abbott, who yesterday declared himself a candidate to replace Turnbull, would become shadow treasurer. If this scenario played out, Abbott would once again find the leadership out of reach. Since many of his colleagues regard him as unelectable, it would be a good career move.

But the word from the Turnbull bunker is that he will not walk away from the fight — that even if the spill motion was carried, as expected, he intends to stand. He told morning TV: "I will not step down. I'll stay leader until the party room removes me as leader."

Hockey has said he won't stand against Turnbull. If he sticks to that, Turnbull would be facing off against Abbott.

As he revs up his climate change rhetoric, Turnbull yesterday told the ABC that everybody in the party room "has got to sit down and reflect over the weekend on what we're talking about here. This is not a game . . . We're talking about the future of our planet. We're talking about whether we, the Liberal Party, will want to be a credible, progressive political movement of the 21st century."

He lashed out at his opponents, while using John Howard as a touchstone. The people "that have sought to tear me down do not even believe in the policies we took to the last election. They basically believe or regard John Howard as being too green. They don't believe in climate change."

Turnbull's stand can be seen as a rare example of principle triumphing over expediency, or an appalling saga of a leader mismanaging his party. In fighting words on Thursday night, he said: "We cannot be seen as a party of climate sceptics . . . And we must be seen as men and women of our word." How it must have galled Turnbull, veteran of so many business deals, to find himself forced to welch on this one.

Just as the Senate is where the fate of the emissions trading scheme is being determined, so the Senate has come into its own this week, especially with the role of Minchin, a former party official, a tough factional player and a wily tactician, and his cohort of sceptics.

Until recently Minchin, who had bitterly resisted Turnbull becoming leader, appeared reconciled to his staying in the job, because no other credible candidate would step up. But Minchin hated the emissions trading legislation, and he knew the Liberal Party's grassroots were increasingly hostile to it.

In the deal, the result of weeks of negotiation mainly between Wong and Ian Macfarlane, the Liberals got most of what they had sought.

But by the start of this week, Turnbull had increasingly lost his party. Monday dawned on a rolling simmer, with internal Liberal resentment over Macfarlane's cosiness with Wong.

Knowing the deal, however elegant the sales job, would struggle to win hearts and minds in the Coalition party room, Macfarlane had asked the Government not to unveil it until Tuesday to maximise his and Turnbull's chances of securing enough votes to steer the bills through the Senate.

The party room was due to meet on Tuesday and Macfarlane wanted a quick, clean process. What he got was a furious backlash from his colleagues and none too subtle mutterings about the perils of Stockholm Syndrome.

The "rubber stamp" strategy was to be applied equally to the Government. Cabinet was only briefed about the deal's full contents at 8am on Tuesday.

As a discordant backdrop to the negotiations, the Government had also been playing aggressive partisan politics on climate. Rudd had lashed Turnbull and the sceptics in an intemperate speech to the Lowy Institute. Then the Government leaked an agreement with Macfarlane that agricultural emissions would be indefinitely excluded, thus stealing a rabbit Macfarlane would rather have pulled out of his own hat.

Tuesday was beyond extraordinary. Turnbull and Macfarlane set out thinking they had made a deal with the Government that they could sell to their colleagues but emerged, after an eight-hour internal slugfest, dressed for the spit roast.

There was an unexpected act of treachery: Andrew Robb, who had been out of the action seeking treatment for depression, was back as a significant player.

He told the party room he would not support the deal with the Government. It was a body blow given Robb's stature with colleagues, and the fact that before his illness, he had been picked by Turnbull as the spokesman on emissions trading. Macfarlane, not a climate warrior, but a political pragmatist and a person of good sense, had merely picked up the reins in Robb's absence. Robb's opposition was a calculated blindside. He meant to hurt, and he did.

After listening to the scale of the dissent, with his patience sorely tested by surprise and confinement, Turnbull blew up and left his now feral party-room colleagues banging their heads against the wall. Turnbull declared before a hastily convened late evening news conference — maybe to assert the reality to himself — that he was leader. There would be a deal with the Government. "I have made the call," he said, as one would say in any other theatre apart from professional politics, in his old theatre of business, where the boss is actually the boss.

Around Parliament House, Turnbull's fate was effectively sealed as the dissenters resolved to tear this emperor down. Steps were taken to force a spill of the Liberal leadership.

At breakfast on Wednesday Turnbull declared on radio that he would not entertain the spill motion. Only hours later, he switched course after a conversation about process with John Howard and about tactics with senior colleagues in Canberra, who told him it would be unwise to give the plotters time to impose any order on the chaos.

Underscoring that point, two West Australian backbenchers, Wilson Tuckey and Dennis Jensen, had inadvertently drafted a motion that would have tipped out Turnbull, and his deputy — their mate and fellow Sandgroper Julie Bishop — a Keystone Cops mistake that took time to correct. There was also the small matter of there being no viable leadership alternative prepared to put up a hand for the job. Into the vacuum strode Kevin Andrews, a man well practised in sucking up all manner of unpleasantness for the greater glory of the Liberal Party.

In one of the more bizarre Canberra press conferences, Andrews declared himself up for the job despite the fact he had not counted numbers, and had no coherent manifesto apart from not being sure humans were causing climate change.

The audience, though, was not the sweating hacks outside, but the Liberals plotting inside the building. Many liked what they heard and rallied accordingly. Andrews managed to collect 35 votes against Turnbull's 48. Given he was a stalking horse rather than a real contender, the result exposed the fragility of Turnbull's leadership.

"My view was, the party had become paralysed and someone had to lance the boil and there was nobody else prepared to put up their hand," Andrews told the ABC yesterday.

Turnbull had prevailed but the victory was pyrrhic. It triggered a trickle of frontbench resignations, which over Thursday became a flood. Turnbull prevailing in the first tilt against his leadership gave definition to the fight. It would be crash-through, not compromise. Turnbull was going to stay and assert his position: pass the amended emissions trading legislation. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. If necessary, Senate colleagues intent on forcing a filibuster would need to be gagged, and the vote forced, in order to make good on the undertaking to Wong and Rudd.

The spectre of the gag was also a galvanising idea for many. Voting for the emissions trading legislation was one thing — but voting to shut up colleagues who wanted to speak and express their opposition? In the culture of Liberal politics this is an enormous and unacceptable step.

By the time Turnbull was confronted in his office after question time on Thursday by Minchin and Abbott, demanding that he agree to defer the legislation, it was clear this was an organised execution. The resignations were about to get worse. Change your mind or we'll have to kill you was the ultimatum.

Outside the office, in the same place where Andrews had stood flogging his leadership wares the day before, there were nice formulations from Abbott about this being a "policy" debate, not a leadership debate. "We put it to Malcolm that in light of the heavy criticism of industry groups of the amendments that we had proposed with the Government and in light of the meltdown which is currently taking place within the Liberal Party, that the matter should be reconsidered," Abbott said.

Abbott's uncompromising insurrection prompted another late-night Turnbull press conference. At one level the message to the assassins was bring it on — at another level the message to the voters was please understand. It was a speech for his political legacy as much for his short-term survival. If he was going to be killed, then he would leave no doubt in the public's mind that he was killed for trying to save the planet. "Saying that we are not going to do anything about climate change is irresponsible, and no credible, responsible political party can have a 'no action on climate change' policy. It is as simple as that."

By late on Thursday night it was becoming clear that Turnbull was hemorrhaging badly. His praetorian guard of progressives stayed visible alongside the Liberal leader, but slipped away in the Senate, the chamber in which the putsch ultimately counted.

Turnbull yesterday described the atmosphere: "It was a rather febrile night last night . . . people told me that some people had changed their minds and then the same person would ring me and say they hadn't changed their minds."

As the Liberals frantically lobbied and backstabbed yesterday, after the Senate adjourned with the legislation in no man's land, acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Wong appeared at a news conference to condemn the Senate's obstinacy.

Gillard had nothing but praise for Turnbull, saying he had "shown great courage and great determination to deliver this change" — a line that would reinforce some colleagues' suspicions about him.

As things appeared last night, however, this courage and determination will not deliver the scheme and will cost him his political head.